The debate over Jauhar in Padmaavat has exposed an uncomfortable tendency in contemporary discourse: judging the past entirely through the moral vocabulary of the present. There is nothing wrong with questioning whether a modern film can inadvertently romanticise a practice that constitutional morality rightly rejects today

There are really two separate questions in the controversy over an actor’s comments on the Jauhar sequence in Padmaavat — what Jauhar meant in its historical context, and what message a modern film depicting it may convey to a contemporary audience.

The latter is a perfectly legitimate subject for debate. But the former cannot be reconstructed entirely through the moral vocabulary of the present.

The fundamental problem with drawing a direct parallel between Jauhar and rape survivors is that it conflates two profoundly different circumstances. Rape is an act of sexual violence forcibly inflicted upon a woman. Jauhar, in the historical context in which it is remembered, was understood as a collective act undertaken by women facing the imminent prospect of capture, sexual violence, enslavement and dishonour following defeat. That does not require us to endorse Jauhar today. It requires us to understand what the act meant to those who undertook it. And this distinction matters.

To say that Jauhar should not be practised today is uncontroversial. Nor should practices such as sati be romanticised or encouraged. Modern constitutional morality, individual liberty and the sanctity of life rightly reject such practices. But rejecting a historical practice........

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